498 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



as related by Theophrastus — the nucleus about which the rest grew) in 

 an earlier setting, apart from the maudragora, in Greek or Roman folk- 

 lore : (1) details of the digging story, such as the pulling of the root by 

 a dog, related by Josephus and Aelian in connection with baaras and 

 aglaophotis ; (2) the story about the mysterious origin of the plant from 

 the urine of a thief, and the groans emitted by it when taken from the 

 ground, modelled upon the older story of Prometheus ; (3) the story 

 of the reproduction of sexual distinctions, reported by Pliny of erynge ; 

 (4) the custom of keeping the root as a fetich, and caring for it as a 

 human being, which finds its pattern in the Lithica. Tliis furnishes us a 

 basis for the following theory : The cliief elements of the middle-age 

 mandragora superstition originated either wholly in the Orient, the 

 pecujiar home of the magic lore of antiquity, or part of them there,* 

 part of them among the Greeks and Romans ; f few of them were at 

 first connected with the mandragora. Tlie elements of Eastern origin 

 passed into the folk-lore of the Greeks and Romans, where they began 

 to unite, and where a story-complex began to form about the mandra- 

 gora. J Passing on to the people of northern Europe, § this story- 

 complex was augmented in the middle ages by the addition to it of 



quae odorem habet grandem, qui hominem extra mentem facit, et est eius radix in simili- 

 tudine corporis humani. In 3. 554. 48 and 3. 619. 3, buUoquilon mandragora, we perhaps 

 have an attempt to reproduce Pu/j.fi6xv\ov, a name cited by the interpolator in 

 Diosc, lib. 4, cap. 76. 



In a medico-botanical glossary published in Mowat's Anecdota Oxoniensia, vol. 1, 

 p. 109, are two glosses on mandragora. They are plainly taken wholly from Dio- 

 scorides, with the exception of the last sentence in the second : ista, ut dicitur, hibita 

 homines umuntes facit. This glossary is taken from a 14tli-century manuscript in 

 the library of Pembroke College, Oxford. 



* For example, using a dog to pull the root, an element evidently of Eastern 

 origin, as shown above, p. 492 f. 



t The circles made about the plant before digging, which I cannot trace back 

 of Theophrastus. Whether or not the ^i^ot6/xoi were indebted to the East for their 

 digging stories I have been unable to ascertain. It is, of course, possible that the 

 custom of making circles about the root, as well as the story about tiie herb of 

 Prometheus, and the habit of treating ophites as a feticli, go back ultimately to 

 the East. 



I By the 5th century (the date of the Juliana Anicia manuscript of Dio.scorides) 

 this included the pulling of the root by a dog, the report that tlie root represented 

 the human form, with sex-distinctions, as shown by the miniatures in the nianu- 

 scrij)! referred to, and doubtless also the encircling of the plant with a sword, and 

 the pronouncing of aphrodisiac formulas, which of course the miniatures cannot 

 indicate. 



§ As to the path taken by the mandragora superstitioTis in their passage north. 



